Sam's Online Journal

As I cull through my songs on iTunes to get rid of duplicates (they’re everywhere, I swear), I find myself becoming reacquainted with some gems I had completely forgotten existed. Well, when my iPod only holds about 26,000 songs and my iTunes has 10 times that number inevitably a few artists/songs get left out when I sync the behemoth. So I have to be kind of an elitist and put on only the songs I’m most in love with at the moment, and I have to say a tearful goodbye to the others. I’m remembering now, though, that there really are no filler songs in my iTunes.

There’s the plethora of Christian music that I had to knock down to Michael W. Smith, TobyMac, Casting Crowns, and Mary Mary. They made the cut, and now reside on my iPod, but there are so many others like Take6, Jeremy Camp, BarlowGirl, and Twila Paris, songs and musicians that I absolutely adore, that I had forgotten were in my collection. That goes for every single genre of music in my wheelhouse, from techno to classical to thrash metal, and everything in between.

So I’m taking a time out to play the music straight from iTunes, and I’m going old school too, setting it on shuffle and letting the songs hit me in no discernible order, like the radio used to do before I stopped listening to it. I’m providing the between songs commentary just like the radio used to do as well. “That was ‘All That She Wants,’ from Ace of Base, a number one smash from 1993.” I might not give Ryan Seacrest a run for his money, but I’m not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Here are some albums I had forgotten were in my library…

Natalie Imbruglia – Left of the Middle
Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell III
Metro Station – Metro Station
The Tony Rich Project – Words
Tool – Aenima
Candlebox – Lucy
Carolina Liar – Coming to Terms
A Fine Frenzy – Bomb in a Birdcage
Fergie – The Dutchess
BlackStreet – Another Level
A Tribe Called Quest – Midnight Marauders

And there are so many more, from albums that I was obsessed with when they first came out, to artists I used to listen to nonstop, to songs I would put on repeat until they drove everyone else crazy around me. As I go through, and get rid of the multiples, suddenly I want to put everything I see onto my iPod, but I sigh because I can’t. I can switch out artists and albums every other sync maybe, but that would be a tedious process just to try and revive these songs. Maybe it’s worth it.

It’s funny, too, because I haven’t fallen out of love with any of these artists or songs. I’ve just been asked to do the impossible by my 120 GB iPod, which is to dig through and pick the ones that I absolutely cannot live without on a daily basis.

The problem is that I’ve just realized I can’t live without the vast majority of these songs. It’s why they’re in my iTunes in the first place. So my dilemma is staring me in the face, but I guess it’s a good one to have, much better than choosing between the Jonas Brothers and Hootie & the Blowfish (it’s Hootie. It’s always Hootie). If I had endless pockets I would just purchase more iPods and spread my library out across them, taking a random one each day so I could be surprised like my iTunes is surprising me right now.

But my pockets are not endless, and I have to keep making my choices. The one thing I know is that I’ll never give in to Pandora or those other internet radio options. Now that I’ve seen what it’s like to have all the music I like I don’t want to go back. Ever.

Sam